Road Japan Bridge

Opening with a few bars of Stravinsky to set the adoring crowd on its feet, this once-three-LP set is Yes at their finest. This was, after all, probably the most mainstream act that had even provisional "prog rock" status, and their tunes show it. While "Heart of the Sunrise" may be one of the more modestly titled Yes songs (compare it with "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" or "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" or even "Total Mass Retain"), it also bears marks of the band playing at its most frenetic pace around Jon Anderson's soaring near-falsetto. Rick Wakeman's grand synthesizer flashes are more than textural, finding visual meshes aplenty with Roger Dean's cryptic cover art–most of which is shrunken or absent on this two-CD reissue…

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Tomoyasu Hotei, known as HOTEI (‘hoe-tay”), is an acclaimed Japanese guitarist, songwriter, composer, performer and record producer, who currently resides in London. HOTEI has sold more than 40 million records in a 35 year career to date, and is best known internationally for the song “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”, which was made famous by its inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movie. HOTEI began his career in 1981, as co-founder, guitarist and principal songwriter of legendary Japanese rock band BOOWY, (“boy”), who enjoyed phenomenal success as one of Japan’s most popular and revered bands…